Page 33 of Scandal Queen

“Indeed it was.” Marcus sniffed and put his glasses back on again; his attention once again settling on me.

“So I believe.” The Queen’s voice remained calm and authoritative. The King hadn’t spoken once. “We need to work hard to increase Leia’s popularity with the public.”

“Mother, Leia hasn’t done anything wrong.” Oliver’s voice tightened. “It was me who behaved is such a deceitful way. Leia is the innocent in this, and she’s one of them. We don’t need to do anything to her to make her more popular with them other than to just let her be herself.”

“I quite agree,” she agreed, nodding at her son. “But let’s polish her up a bit, really give them a people’s princess to fall in love with.”

My head began to whirl. The walls of the meeting room spun with an alarming speed.

Oliver’s hand slammed down on the table. “No, that’s not the point here. I’ve just promised the people on a live television interview that I’m going to begin to show them myself. That begins with her.”

Sweet Jesus.

My head ached like it needed to be between my knees while I breathed into a brown paper bag.

I pushed my chair back. My eyesight tinged with darkness, light spots zooming across my vision. “Please excuse me.”

I probably broke yet another protocol as I lurched for the door. From the edges of my still working peripheral vision, I saw Oliver stand to follow but I held out my hand.

In the hallway I gasped.

I wanted to run, find Daisy, and then leave this place and never return.

But hadn’t I promised him only hours ago that I wouldn’t run? He knew! He knew this was what it would be like, and he’d coerced me into a promise with his surreptitious charm and general wily ways. The sneaky royal blighter.

Instead of searching my way back to the apartment, I fell through the door next to the meeting room, back into the library where I’d initially met the King and Queen.

“Ha! Told you; that was well under thirty minutes.”

I froze as the sardonic voice darted across the room. Like Oliver’s, but not. My gaze swung until it landed on the two other Beaufort children sprawled across the sofas.

“Leia, you’ve let me down.” Isabella sat up, crossing her endlessly long legs, and reaching into a small bag on a low table in front of the sofa on which she’d been lay. She pulled out a gold-coloured credit card and pinged it towards her brother John. “Twenty-four hours only, and if you get me in trouble with the oldies, I’ll kill you.”

I didn’t want to look at him. He disgusted me. How he’d behaved with Charlotte Macclesfield could never be forgiven. A fiery little stab of rage pinged in my currently healed chest. He’d betrayed his brother, made him a laughingstock in front of the whole country… but… a little voice said in my head… you wouldn’t be here now if he hadn’t.

Hmm.

I folded my arms, well aware of the blue eyes of the middle prince on me. He was nothing like Oliver. Whereas the future king was astoundingly handsome, beautiful almost in the chiselled edges of his face I loved to slide my fingers around, the long slope of his nose and his high and smooth brow; John’s looks were diluted almost: his hair a pale gold, his skin pale and light.

“The tabloid princess.” John pushed up from his own sofa and paced across the space to where I stood with my arms folded like a shield. He managed to walk as though he were on the prowl and I shifted back, rocking onto my heels. “What a stir you’ve caused.”

I lifted my chin. “Not intentionally.”

“But still, so many column inches, so many things to print about.”

I glared with as much animosity as I could summon until the bastard laughed in my face. “Isabella, she’s such fresh blood.”

The youngest of the siblings, tall and willowy, as beautiful as any woman on the front cover of a magazine, stood from her sofa and then promptly fell to the side.

John’s attention on me lapsed and I breathed a sigh of relief while they both fell about laughing. Without looking too obvious, I glanced over Isabella. She seemed blind drunk—how long had we been in that meeting room? To me it had only felt like five minutes in front of a firing squad.

I took a step backwards, but John’s eyes snapped onto me again. “Don’t run, little princess, we only want to play.”

I gasped loudly. What the hell had I entered into?

Stepping backwards, I fell over a low object and lurched towards the ground. Behind me the door opened and strong arms caught me.

“Jesus, John! She has enough trouble standing up as it is.” Oliver’s lips pressed into my neck and John folded at the waist, howling with laughter.